


Introduction to (Non)Human Physiology

by Glaciere



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Everyone is still a werewolf, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-26
Updated: 2013-02-26
Packaged: 2017-12-03 16:32:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/700361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glaciere/pseuds/Glaciere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whatever Stiles might have imagined enrolling at Berkeley would be like, having three roommates with no concept of personal space wasn't on his list.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Introduction to (Non)Human Physiology

Being themselves, Scott and Stiles forgo packing until the last minute, which is why Stiles is driving through the woods surrounding Beacon Hills at midnight, when he should’ve left ten hours ago. Between a friend who requires help figuring out what of his superhero-themed underwear to bring to college and what to donate, and being on time for student orientation, Stiles has his priorities straight. His own things are somewhere in the back of his truck, courtesy of his dad. Stiles is fairly sure he has his medicine and a there was a lot less plaid in his closet when he left. He probably won’t arrive to Berkeley entirely clotheless.

Scott calls him at half past one.

“I still can’t believe you’ve chosen to interact with little people. Voluntarily. As a life path. Your guru is disappointed in you.” Stiles says into his phone. He keeps both eyes on the road and one hand on the wheel, going at a speed that is more crawling than actual driving.

“I like kids. And a guy who spent ten years pining after Lydia Martin and then had a gay revelation after two dates with her doesn’t get to be my guru,” Scott says without heat.

“I’d never touched boobs before,” Stiles says. He slows down. The lights on the forest road are out - again - and in the darkness it’d be easy to not notice a deer on the road. Stiles isn’t keen on celebrating the start of his independent life with a roadkill charge. He makes a note to himself to tell his dad about the lights.

“They looked fine in porn. I didn’t know they’d be so unattractive in 3D,” Stiles adds after a beat. “Though Lydia’s boobs are prettier than most.”

“Ew. No, Mum, his first day was today,” Scott says, not bothering to muffle the mouthpiece. “Sorry,” he says to Stiles.

“I told you it’ll be fine. The most I’ll miss is my advisor failing to read my name right. Should’ve changed it legally.”

Scott hums. “I don’t even remember it.”

“Good.” Stiles says emphatically. “Gotta go, call you when I’m settled, okay?”

He was right; he didn’t miss much. His academic advisor is a burly man whose name is scrawled atop of Stiles’ notes. Stiles turns it upside down and sideways, but it’s unintelligible. He thinks it might be ‘Professor Matthews’. In turn, Professor chooses to go Coach Finstock’s route and doesn’t even try to pronounce Stiles’ name, just shoves Stiles’ class schedule and a couple of bright pamphlets at him and tells him to come back at hours that actually exist or bring coffee. Stiles is sure they’ll have a beautiful partnership based entirely on caffeine. He checks the schedule. It’s the same one he’s had since orientation, so hopefully no one fucked up and signed him into English major instead of Biology.

When Stiles finally steps into the room that would be his for at least a year, he is barely conscious. The bed next to the window has a backpack lying on it. Stiles is going to hold the fact that he’d missed a chance to choose a nicer bed over Scott’s head. There’s bound to be a favor he’ll need Scott to do at some point. Mutual blackmail is the way they roll.

Stiles throws his bag in the vague direction of the dresser and hits the bed, forgetting to change out of his travel clothes.

He wakes up to a beautiful blond girl popping bubblegum in his face. One of her curls tickles Stiles’ cheek until he feebly swats it away. The girl moves, too, and Stiles follows her with his eyes. 

“He’s alive!” she calls out. She’s wearing an oversized button-down and nothing else. She’s Lydia levels of gorgeous. Stiles isn’t sure he’s not still asleep and/or had fucked up his directions and wandered to the girls’ dorms. He sits up and takes the room in. In the daylight it looks a little rugged. The paint on the walls is scratched in some places and yellowed in others, the table looks like someone’s been chewing on it. There’s a half-dead flower in the pot on the windowsill. 

“I’m Erica,” the girl says when it becomes obvious Stiles isn’t going to strike up a conversation.

“Stiles.”

“I’m guessing you’re Isaac’s roommate.” Erica tilts her head and regards him with a long look. “You smell nice.”

Stiles isn’t sure if that’s a come-on or sarcasm; he’s been in these clothes for two days and had slept in them, and while his aftershave was advertised as minty, Stiles isn’t sure someone could smell anything other than the stench of travel on him.

“I need a shower,” he mutters to himself, surprised when Erica snorts.

“Good luck getting in there. The beauty queen,” she raises her voice on the last two words, “has been blow-drying his hair for the past fifteen minutes.”

Either she means Isaac, or Isaac’s gotten very, very lucky last night (with Stiles in the room, which, no, but Stiles isn’t going to focus on that). Either way, Stiles wants to meet the guy.

Stiles’ phone rings, startling him out of his thoughts. The chime comes from under his bed. Stiles fishes it out together with a couple of dust balls stuck to it. He hopes Isaac has some money set aside for cosying up the place, because they definitely need a vacuum. The screen flashes Lydia’s name at him, and while Stiles is tempted to not take the call, he recalls Lydia’s affinity for long pointy nails and dislike for people who don’t take her calls. Her boobs were not the only reason they didn’t work out. 

“Hey,” he says, picking up. Erica’s looking at him strangely, but then, maybe not. Stiles is bad with facial expressions. His chemistry teacher seemed to have been constipated all through his high school years.

“Am I your messenger now?” Lydia snaps at him instead of a greeting. “Why didn’t you give Danny your number? He wants us to meet up next month. Old friends.”

Stiles is genuinely confused. Their small group, glued together by way of Allison being Scott’s girlfriend and Lydia’s friend, had never been that friendly. They had a lot of drama between them, though; by the end of the senior year, the scoreboard Stiles had had in his room counted his one kiss with Danny and a make out session with Lydia’s boobs, as well as Jackson and Allison’s drunk neck-sucking and an ill-advised kiss between Scott and Lydia. Scott and Allison had been broken up at that point. They’ve patched things up since then, but their relationship is still shaky at best. 

He realizes he’s been silent for a while. “Friends.”

“Apparently.” Lydia huffs in his ear. She’s probably in her dorm room right now. It’s Sunday; she might even still be wearing pajamas. What counts as pajamas for Lydia Martin, anyway. Stiles fights the urge to ask. These aren’t usually his best battles, but he wins this one. 

“I don’t want to do it, too, Stiles. I’ll see enough of you in Math as it is,” Lydia says. “But you want to say no to Danny, you call him yourself.” 

She disconnects without saying goodbye, as always. 

Stiles checks the time; he’s been talking to Lydia for three minutes, but Isaac hasn’t been out of the bathroom. Stiles looks at suspiciously amused Erica.

“Is he always like that?” he asks. “Does he require darkness to sleep in the day? Is he a vampire? Are you trying to ease me into the fact he’s going to sparkle when he steps into the sunlight?”

Erica laughs, short and sudden, tugs at the hem of her shirt. At some point Stiles forgot she is half-naked. 

“We might have to check,” she says and winks at Stiles. The bathroom door creaks open at the same time and a tall, shirtless guy comes out. His hair is a mess of meticulously done curls. Stiles stares at him. Maybe he and Erica met in a club for people with cool hair.

“I’m your roommate,” Stiles says and realizes he doesn’t know the room’s number. “Probably. Is this room 204?”

“Yeah,” Isaac eyes him warily, then steps closer. “You smell nice.”

Maybe it’s just a club for weird people.

“He’s Stiles,” Erica says. She throws a bundle at Isaac’s head. “I ironed your shirt.”

It doesn’t look very ironed, Stiles wants to say. In fact, it looks like someone had sat on it for hours. Isaac is visibly of the same opinion, though he doesn’t say anything either. He sets the shirt aside and wanders off to the dresser.

“Look,” Stiles says. “I don’t want to ruin your fun, and I understand I probably looked more dead than alive, but in the future, please don’t have sex with me in the room? I’m a light sleeper. We’ll work out a schedule. Or a code. How does a red sock on the door handle sound?” 

“Not his girlfriend,” Erica says. 

Stiles catches Isaac’s eyes and he mouthes ‘yet’. Stiles is tempted to give the guy a thumbs-up for bravery. Girls are complicated.

His phone chimes with a message from Lydia: ‘You do take Math, right? Don’t make me drag you to greatness, Stilinski.’ Stiles smiles and gets up from the bed, tugs a tee-shirt and spare underwear from his backpack. His other bags are still in the parking lot, clothes doubtless getting more creased by the minute.

Erica and Isaac don’t notice his departure. Stiles closes the bathroom door, hoping they’ll find Erica a skirt to put on before he finishes showering. 

By Tuesday, Stiles has known Isaac for six days. Despite Stiles’ previous reservations about living with a guy who isn’t Scott and therefore might not be inclined to curb the urges to kill him in his sleep, Isaac so far hasn’t displayed a slightest inclination to murder Stiles. Instead, he likes comics and borrows Stiles’ aftershave. Stiles tells him he’s signed up as a Molecular and Cell Biology major and plans to go into forensics after, and Isaac tells him he’s in pre-med. Strictly speaking, Berkeley doesn’t have pre-med-specific courses, so their Math and Chemistry classes cross.

Erica is in their room more often than not, lazing around on Isaac’s bed or the big lumpy chair in the corner, a long shirt draped over her knees as she reads. It’s a fifth Harry Potter book she says she’s rereading for her Literature class, but Stiles can see her biting her nails as she gets closer to the end.

Unlike some universities Stiles has read about, Berkeley’s Welcome Week consists of choosing a club (Stiles is firmly in the go-home-and-play-video-games club, though he’d kept a bright sheet of paper he’d found on a bench in the park, with information on the student activity fair printed on it), meeting new people and getting drunk with your frat brothers if you have any. Scott is all the brothers he’d ever need, though Stiles threatens to kick Scott’s ass over Skype if he doesn’t sign up for anything or if he only signs up for clubs Allison chose. Archery may suit her, but Scott’s more likely to poke his eye out with an arrow, and eye-patches are a thing of the past.

Isaac wants to apply to an animal shelter volunteer group he’s found within a day of coming to Berkeley and tries to drag Stiles with him.

“Dude.” Stiles says from the table he’s occupied for his future study notes. It's messy and already full of crumpled sheets of paper. “I know you haven’t met Scott, but believe me when I tell you - my hands are full, I can’t care for any other puppies. But I encourage you to participate, be the man!” he waves a hand at Isaac, smiles at him. “Be the man who brings Thai home after a shift.”

“I want Chinese,” Erica says, coming into the room butt first, half-bent around something Stiles can’t see from his chair. “Urgh, my arms hate me so much right now. I got you a fridge,” she announces unnecessarily, presenting them with an old mini-fridge. One of its doors is slightly unhinged, and Stiles can see the off-color squares left from magnets.

“Where did you get it?” Stiles side-eyes the fridge. It looks like it’ll disintegrate any moment now.

“Derek gave it to you. Well, he gave it to me, but my roommate’s got a fridge already, and it’s better than this piece of shit. No, really, can someone call for Chinese? I’m starving.”

“You have a boyfriend? Does he hate you a lot?” Stiles sends a look towards Erica, but she’s busy tying her hair up, string in her mouth and strands slipping through her fingers. She shakes her head instead of answering. Stiles figures out it’s none of his business, but then, it’s never stopped him before, and he’d really like to know who he has to thank for enormous bills he will be paying when this so-called fridge goes to fridges’ heaven. He turns to Isaac.

Isaac shrugs. “Derek’s not her boyfriend. He’s older than us.”

“Older means more experienced, nothing wrong with that,” Stiles says magnanimously, because this be the wisdom he disperses, and also he’s heard this age argument so much from Scott he’s long since adopted the same stance. 

Erica wriggles out of her shorts and heads for the bathroom, stopping to take one of Isaac’s longer sweatshirts out of the dresser. By now Stiles is used to her being half-naked all the time. He’s both a little sad Erica doesn’t see him as a possible sexual partner (it’s a principle of things) and full of sympathy for his roommate.

“Did Isaac try to rope you into rescuing kittens from trees?” she asks, smirking at Isaac. He scowls at her and she sighs. “Have you asked Derek about it?” 

“He knows I want to be a vet,” Isaac says.

Stiles looks at Erica’s slightly pursed lips and Isaac’s stiff posture. “Is Derek your father?” he squints at Isaac. “Are you having an illicit, possibly incestuous affair?”

Erica rolls her eyes and shuts the bathroom door. Isaac escapes having to answer by opening the fridge. There’s a steaming pot pie inside, and Isaac’s face softens. 

“Actual food!” Stiles says, happy at the prospect of finally eating something home-made. He misses Mrs McCall’s stew like a limb. Then he remembers his earlier question. “Seriously, are you related?”

“What kind of porn… no, you know what, don’t tell me,” Isaac tells him firmly. “We’ve known each other for a long time. And Derek doesn’t have kids. He’s not married. He’s practically a hermit.”

Stiles can hear the annoyance in his voice, an old kind, directed more at mysterious Derek than at him, but he shrugs, already more interested in the pot and it’s contents. They have a drawer filled with assorted shit previous tenants have left there; Stiles rummages through it until he finds a spoon.

“It’s good,” he says after slightly murdering the pie. Isaac scoops it with his hands. Stiles waves to Erica when she comes back half a spoon later, repeats, “This is so good.”

Erica smiles at him. “Thanks.”

The classes start on a Thursday, instead of a more logical Monday, so Stiles completely forgets about them and starts his morning by being scared shitless by Isaac’s alarm.

“Who _the fuck_ wakes up to wolves howling in his ear?” Stiles is hobbling on one leg, trying to simultaneously brush his teeth, locate his other pant leg and throw together something at least vaguely resembling breakfast. Isaac wakes up about half an hour after he is vertical, so Stiles shoves a sandwich at him and doesn’t expect an answer. They barely have time to eat; their first class is Math, and that’s all Stiles knows about it. It is possibly located on the second floor of the twins’ building. 

It’s a second to the left classroom on the fourth floor. Stiles can see Lydia’s strawberry blond head on the front row, closer to Professor Matthews, who Stiles - shit - has promised to come meet two days ago. Matthews doesn’t comment on Stiles’ inability to be on time, which is more than Harris and half the other teachers at Beacon Hills High would’ve done. Just for this, Berkeley rates extremely high on Stiles’ list of new favorite things.

Stiles follows Isaac until they stop somewhere in the back. The entire row is empty except for a big black guy in a blue sweatshirt. The guy waves them over and Isaac almost trips over his own legs before leaping to the guy in two steps. Stiles scrambles after him and finds himself a seat while Isaac speaks to the guy so softly he can’t hear a thing. It takes Isaac a a couple of minutes to remember Stiles’ existence. 

“Wait,” he says to the guy, “This is Stiles. He’s my roommate, because your lazy ass was late for Welcome Week.”

“Nice to feel appreciated,” Stiles says dryly.

Isaac slaps him on the back. “You’re fine. It’s Boyd who will have to room with some guy who has smelly socks.”

Boyd rolls his eyes and answers in a voice drier than Stiles’ by a mile. “I’ll live.”

Boyd, apparently, is an engineering major and has been Isaac’s best friend for the past five years.

“I got held up a bit,” Boyd twirls a pen in his fingers. “Family business. We wanted to room together, but it’ll do Isaac good to meet new people.”

“I’d be glad, if I were you. You just narrowly avoided being woken up by howling wolves,” Stiles says. “We can totally trade roommates.”

Boyd smirks. “Believe me, I know what you’re talking about. I’ll try to content myself with smelly socks.”

At the end of the class Stiles has no idea what the lecture had been about, but has a lot of new blackmail material on Isaac. He glances at his watch, waving for both Boyd and Isaac to go ahead, and waits for Lydia at the doors, hand outstretched to take her bag. It’s freakishly heavy.

“I swear, this time there’s seriously rocks in there,” Stiles says.

“I can hit you upside your head with it and then we’ll find out.” 

Stiles is almost certain she’s joking, but he shakes his head, just in case, and waits until she opens the door - always for herself first and then for him, because the bags are too heavy for Stiles to be a gentleman. While he’s searching for a floor map to figure out how to get to their Chemistry class, Lydia pretends to study her nails. Her social queen bee mask is pretty much a thing of the past, but the real Lydia is surprisingly close to it. At homecoming she hugged him and then promptly used the time to order Stiles to apply to Berkeley in a vaguely threatening whisper. Stiles took her apparent desire to spend four years in one university with him as her loving him till the end of times, and Lydia hasn’t Stockholmed him into anything, whatever Scott might think.

“Who are you rooming with?” Stiles asks, evading students on the way to the second-floor Chemistry classroom.

“Myself,” Lydia says, her brow going up. “If you ever need somewhere to crash at, you’re welcome to use your other friends.”

Of course Lydia went for a single; Stiles almost wishes he could afford a single room, but then, neither Isaac nor Erica are actually that bad. Being able to cook pretty much puts Erica in a ‘forever cool’ category. And splitting bills for laundry and take-out works out well, too.

They reach their class in time. Stiles looks over the seats, but Isaac’s either not here or Stiles doesn’t see him in a sea of people. Lydia takes them both to the front row she’s used to, and for the next hour and a half Stiles tries to concentrate on putting notes on paper instead of random doodly swirls.

At lunchtime Stiles drags Lydia to a little cafe off the road that Erica and him had found a couple of days ago. Isaac and Boyd are already there, sitting by the window, and Stiles crashes on a seat like he hasn’t sat down in a week and moans. Lydia sits next to him, rolling her eyes so hard Stiles has to bite his tongue to not point out her face might get stuck like that if she keeps this on.

“Professor Adrian rides us so hard you wouldn’t believe,” Stiles says.

“And it took you zero seconds to go for a sex joke,” Lydia tries very hard not to snort at Stiles - he can see that in her expression, in the way she’s biting at the inside of her cheek, - because that would be unladylike and she’s got a social status to uphold in front of people she doesn’t know.

“Everything is better with sex jokes,” Erica says somewhere from behind Stiles just as he opens his mouth to introduce Lydia to everyone, but then he bites his tongue (accidentally) because Erica screams Boyd’s name in his ear. 

She’s on Boyd in seconds, throwing her arms around him and literally bouncing.

“Erica, your puppy is showing,” Stiles says. For some reason this makes Isaac laugh and Boyd grin into Erica’s hair. 

Lydia coughs from beside Stiles, and he remembers she doesn’t know who these people even are. 

“Lydia, this is my roommate, Isaac,” Stiles gestures to him, trying and failing to remember Isaac’s surname. “This is Erica and Boyd. This is Lydia Martin, I’ve known her forever. Sometimes she lets me tell people we’re friends.”

Lydia smiles brightly; it’s one of her fake, slightly-off smiles reserved for strangers she wants to impress, and Erica, who’s already disentangled herself from Boyd and dragged a chair from a nearby table, smiles right back.

“I want to know where you got your lipstick,” Lydia says to Erica, no-nonsense right off the bat, in the same tone of voice she had used to tell Allison her hair looked amazing. She’s willing to put effort into it, and even though it might be a while until she snorts at Stiles with any of his new friends present, Stiles is glad to know Lydia’s done with voluntary social leave she’s put herself on after breaking up with Jackson.

“So. Fill me in,” Boyd’s saying across from Stiles, head turned to Isaac and body to Erica. “Have there been any kittens in need of rescuing from trees?”

Isaac flushes, two spots of red high on his cheeks, and mutters something. Stiles remembers Erica saying something to the same effect, processes the information and and adds the conclusion to his newly made Isaac Blackmail Material Folder. He’ll need stuff like this for the coming months, when he’s too lazy or passed out from all the studying to go scavenge the neighborhood for food. Really, it’s all in the spirit of friendship, not like he wouldn’t share.

“There might’ve been talk about working in a shelter, “ Erica pipes in. 

Lydia, having found an opening, turns to Isaac fully and flutters her eyelashes at him to absolutely no effect. “Really?” she says. “Stiles used to work in a vet clinic.”

“You said you had no idea how to care for animals,” Isaac frowns at him, and Stiles raises a finger.

“First, dude, I said no such thing. And second, Stiles didn’t use to work in a vet clinic, Stiles used to cover some shifts for his best friend.”

“Which is the same thing, since you made Scott give you your part from his paycheck,” Lydia says smoothly, taking a sip of tea and blotting her lips with a napkin. 

“Eight bucks a night, that was a real fortune,” Stiles’ voice is dry. “Should’ve bought myself a nicer car.”

Erica snorts. Isaac uses momentary silence after this to latch on Stiles and try to get him to sign up as a volunteer once more, with Stiles trying to not dig himself deeper by saying he not only did shifts, but picked up a few tricks from Dr Deaton, because at the time Scott’s relationship with Allison was still a new thing and he spent most of their free time with her, leaving Stiles with nothing to do.

“What was the clinic’s name?” Isaac asks at last. “You know, I’ve lived in Beacon Hills most of my live, I may know the place. If it’s bad, I’ll let you be.”

“I… seriously have got no idea.” Stiles shrugs. “The doc’s name is Deaton, I’ll give you that. A black guy, likes to yoda people.” 

Erica makes a soft noise at the mention of Deaton’s name, and when Stiles meets her eyes, her gaze is accessing, calculating. He makes a face at her.

“We know him,” Boyd says.

“What, all three of you?” 

Erica chooses that moment to answer Lydia’s question about her lipstick, and Isaac tells Boyd where their room is, and Stiles resolutely doesn’t think his roommate and his friends are in any way strange.

By the time October rolls around, Stiles is resigned to a fact that his roommate is in a freaking cult.

A cult with no concept of personal space, separate living quarters or clothes. 

They’ve been eating together, all four of them, ever since that first lunch. Lydia is starting to relax around Stiles’ new friends, especially around Boyd, who, Stiles has noticed, follows her with his eyes more often than not whenever she’s in the room. Stiles supposes it makes sense, Boyd’s quiet calm is something none of Lydia’s friends ever had. It’ll do her good. Stiles’ involvement would be limited to murdering Boyd if he ever hurts a hair on Lydia’s head.

Speaking of rooms, while Stiles is used to Erica being a constant presence in theirs, Boyd’s addition to the mix throws him a little. Boyd has installed himself into Stiles’ space pretty much the same as Erica - one morning Stiles wakes up, groggy after pulling an all-nighter and crushing on the bed still in his jeans and tee-shirt, and Boyd is there, offering him water without a word. Stiles doesn’t exactly mind, he gets the closeness, he and Scott did, after all, live out of each other’s pockets all through childhood. Mostly this new development just makes study sessions more bearable and food more readily available, because Erica keeps cooking God knows where and stuffing their poor little fridge. It does, just as Stiles suspected, cost them a lot to repair once it has a fridge variation of a mental breakdown and refuses to acknowledge the plug as a power source, but he’s got too used to it to suggest throwing it away, especially since Isaac exercises his pet issues on the fridge by calling it Joe. 

Both Erica and Boyd go back to their rooms to sleep most of the time, but there are nights when the two of them sleep in the room, piled up on Isaac’s bed in a tangle of limbs. The beds are too small for three people, and after the second time Stiles wakes up with a body pressed against him, dressed in nothing but underwear (or, in Erica’s case, a loose tee-shirt in addition to underwear, because his room, his rules), Stiles puts his foot down.

They’re also very free with their physical affection, both towards each other and Stiles, though Lydia mostly escapes having to endure crushing Erica bear hugs - the girl seriously packs way too much strength for her frame. The touching is constant if fleeting; a hand on the shoulder, a brush against Stiles’ side on the way to the bathroom, an absent hand over his head. It might’ve been flirting, for all Stiles knows, because he doesn’t actually know very much about it; but the touches are so clearly non-sexual even Stiles picks up on that, so the only option he’s left with is-

“A cult,” Isaac repeats flatly. The room is theirs for the night, which is rare, so they end up downloading a shitty horror movie and making up dialogue for it as they go. Erica’s out with Lydia for a girls’ night, and Boyd is at Derek’s, apparently.

“And he’s probably your cult leader,” Stiles says.

“Who, Boyd?”

“No, Derek. He totally is. I mean,” Stiles says reasonably. “He could be your father, but Boyd doesn’t exactly seem like a fruit off your family tree. No, don’t make that face at me,” Stiles swats Isaac’s hand away and tugs at his hair. At some point during the movie he and Isaac have piled up on each other, Isaac’s head on Stiles’ stomach, and it should be awkward, but only reminds Stiles of his and Scott’s sleepovers. “You were also in for swingers, but there’s not enough sex going on between you to, like, seriously consider that an option.” He thinks for a moment and adds, “If there is, don’t tell me.”

Isaac’s heavy, long-suffering sigh is all that answers Stiles, and since it’s way too early in their friendship for Stiles to start earning these, he tickles Isaac in revenge and gets an accidental elbow in the stomach for all his trouble.

After the boundaries have been established and no one sleeps in Stiles’ bed except for Stiles (which is a depressing thought, and also at least partially his roommates’ fault), things even out for a while. Matthews leaves Stiles alone for the most part and very obviously couldn’t care less about Stiles if he tried, which is more than fine with Stiles himself.

The date Danny had set for their ‘old friends’ reunion creeps up on Stiles; he remembers about it only because of Scott.

“What do you mean, not going?”

“We can’t”, Scott says. In the Skype window his face looks too pale and hair wilder than usual. He sounds tired. “Allison really wants to participate in this thing, and I can’t just… I can’t tell her not to,” Scott sighs. “And I want to be there for her, you know? Cheering her on.”

“Are you fighting again?” It’s not a question that has a clear answer; Stiles knows Allison’s Facebook is on ‘it’s complicated’ at the moment, and Scott’s always been at ‘in the relationship’, and he’d gladly change it to ‘married’.

Scott makes a non-committal sound. Stiles doesn’t inquire further, sighs, passing a hand over his head, absently noticing he needs to buzz his hair into submission. 

“I’ll tell Danny to change the date.”

Scott shakes his head. “No, no. You go on, have fun.”

“Right, ‘cause Jackson and Lydia’s meeting is gonna be so fun. I may just die,” Stiles moans. “Scott. I just realized that Jackson’s coming to Berkeley. And Lydia will meet him, because she’s as stubborn as a fucking mule. Can I skip, too? There’s not enough alcohol in the world.”

Scott laughs in his face, the bastard.

“Jackson’s not coming,” Lydia says a couple of days later in the cafe, pursing her lips and glaring at Stiles like it’s somehow his fault Jackson is a dick. Erica and Boyd are discussing her Lit assignment that Stiles knows little about and most of it from Erica cursing at her laptop for the last two nights. She claims the silence of their room is helping her concentrate, but where Isaac can sleep through a herd of dancing elephants, Stiles is just about ready to write Erica’s damn paper himself.

Lydia snaps her fingers in front of his face, and he jumps a little. 

“I said--”

“That Jackson isn’t coming, yeah, got that. Scott and Allison can’t make it, either.”

“What.” Lydia says, in such an incredulous tone the others stop talking.

“What’s going on?” Boyd asks.

“Allison decided her college life just isn’t full enough without an archery competition.” Stiles makes a helpless gesture. “Apparently she’s tearing through her opponents. Who are not used to shooting deer in the eye from age twelve, so.”

“Great.” Lydia fishes her phone out of her handbag, stares it at, hesitating. “I’ll call Danny.”

“We could still go, the two of us,” Stiles says, adding for Boyd’s benefit, “One of our friends from high school wanted us to meet up, you know, the old gang, that kind of thing, and he’s like, the sweetest guy ever, but all our other friends are assholes and bailed.”

“Sucks,” Boyd says.

“We could…” Erica says uncertainly, and Stiles catches the look she gives Isaac, who answers with a shrug and gets his own phone out.

Lydia harrumphs, but stays silent. They don’t like upsetting Danny, because he put up with a lot of shit from all of them through the years and still stayed a friend, but however miserable Stiles would have been with Jackson, Lydia, Allison and Scott snarling at each other around a table, a sad night out with only him and Lydia is likely not what Danny had in mind.

“Can we go instead?” Boyd asks suddenly. He’s looking at Lydia, who glances up at him, surprised. “It’s not going to be much of a reunion, anymore,” he reasons.

“Yeah, we’ll just drink, it’ll be fun,” Erica adds. “I don’t think we’ve ever been out together, no?”

“Because your cult leader forbids mingling with non-initiated people.” Stiles picks at his omelet and yawns. “Are you done with your assignment? Because if you are coming tonight, I’m going to sleep in _your_ room to avoid this misery.”

“I’ll get you ear plugs for your next birthday.” Erica pats him on the head, smirking.

“Our cult leader okayed the party, actually.” Isaac hold up his phone in confirmation, and Stiles can indeed see the short ‘OK’ after Isaac’s ‘Can we hv a party @yrs’. Stiles raises his brows.

“I see you’ve forgotten to mention Lydia and me.” 

Isaac just smiles.

Whatever. It’s his cult leader, he can deal with him.

In Stiles’ mind ‘Derek’s place’ has always been an actual place - an apartment, big enough or cosy enough to fit a gang of college kids. A house, maybe. What he doesn’t expect is a bar, only a handful of people inside on a week night, with walls done in wood and warm colors, sparse bar stools at the counter, smoke curling towards the ceiling. It is unexpectedly named “Laura’s”, though the person tending to the bar is a man. A very hot man, in a tall, dark and bad with keeping himself clean-shaved way. Stiles does a double-take, stumbling when Lydia chooses this moment to drag him and Danny to a far left table where Stiles’ roommates have already got a round of drinks. 

“You’ve been keeping secrets,” Stiles announces, flopping down. “See me frowning. Give me beer.”

Isaac slides a beer over. “We didn’t know you well enough. This is kind of a place for people in the know.”

“Duh, no self-respecting cult would let people in willy-nilly,” Stiles agrees. The beer is rich and slightly bitter, just the way he likes it. He glances at the bartender, who’s serving a cocktail to a woman in a leather jacket. He doesn’t look particularly welcoming, but Stiles still toys with the idea of abandoning his friends and going over to the bar. 

“Are we in a cult now?” Danny doesn’t look up from the tablet he brought with him, but he sounds as nice as always, so Stiles figures out he’s not mad at them for not telling him Jackson and Scott and Allison won’t be here. Still, for a person who drove for three hours Danny’s not very talkative. Stiles has a nagging suspicion Jackson’s not wanting to come has something to with Danny. 

Stiles feels like he’ll need a new scoreboard, and most of them are in different states; he should be so over this.

“We could be,” he says. “We could be a beer-drinking cult. Beer worshippers. We could have, like, initiation rites, drink through your nose, that kind of thing. How does it sound?”

“Dumb,” Lydia says. She’s smiling, though, twirling a lock of braided hair in her hands and looking past Stiles at Boyd, a thing that’s been happening with increasing frequency lately. Stiles could’ve mentioned it to Lydia, because he’s not sure she knows it’s been happening, but he values his balls, however blue they are. Besides, it’s not his business even if it feels like his; messing with his friends’ love lives almost cost him a friend once already. He looks around the table and then to the bar. All the stools are taken, so Stiles turns his attention back to the table with a sigh.

An hour or so in Danny leaves with a half-baked excuse, making Stiles a definite fifth wheel. Stiles manages a full half-hour before standing up.

“I’ll just,” he says. No one’s paying him any attention; Stiles is pretty sure Isaac’s trying to feel Erica up her skirt under the table, and plans to dig up that red sock they never agreed upon, because he’s seriously not drunk enough to consent to people having sex in his presence. 

Stiles makes his way to the bar and finds an empty stool. The bartender looks at him askance.

“My friends are assholes, and I haven’t had sex in months,” Stiles says. “Whatever you have for that.”

The bartender snorts and gives him straight whiskey. It smells like gasoline and tastes close to it, but Stiles downs the shot without complaining.

“Yeah, I figured death by poisoning might be my best bet.” He looks down into his now empty glass and gestures for the bartender to fill it up again. Now that Stiles is at the bar, he can’t find the courage to chat the guy up, be shot down and end up even more without a prospect of getting laid than he was before. At least for now he can keep pretending the hot bartender would go for Stiles given a chance. 

His glass stays miserably empty. Stiles cocks his head at the bartender and gestures to the bottle in his hands.

“People say I smell nice,” he says. Stiles for President of the ‘most stupid pick-up line ever’ club.

“I think you’ve had enough.” The bartender frowns at him; he has very expressive eyebrows. Stiles can practically feel the disapproval radiating off them.

“I have.” Stiles readily agrees, nodding. He stops when reality starts to swim around him. “Beer. I’ve certainly had enough beer, my bladder is with you on this. But I only got one shot of whiskey, which does not constitute enough. Especially since…”

“Your friends are assholes.” The bartender finishes with him. “We at “Laura’s” count by alcohol content, not by label. You’re out of luck. We wouldn’t want any of your friends to have to carry you home.”

“Dude, we so would.”

“We really wouldn’t,” says Isaac, coming up from behind Stiles and picking him up. Stiles lets out an undignified squawk, but manages to find his feet and not land on his face. “Thanks for looking after him.”

They do end up having to carry Erica home, realizing in the process nobody knows where Erica actually lives, so Boyd just leaves her in Isaac’s bed and crashes on the floor. At some point in the night, he tries to crawl into Stiles’ bed and promptly gets a foot in the face. 

In the morning Stiles spends a lot of minutes trying to first decide if he’s alive, and then if he can skip Human Physiology. His head feels like someone’s bombing it from the inside. Water helps, but not by much. 

He tries to wake Isaac up by sitting on him. Isaac oomphs and turns so Stiles lands right between him and still sleeping Erica, who nevertheless immediately spoons him from the back. 

“Wake up,” Stiles says, tugging at Isaac’s hair.

“God, you stink,” Isaac mutters, trying to mash his face into a pillow. 

“What are you talking about, I smell like roses, you said so yourself. Wake up, smell the coffee, go to classes!”

Erica shifts beside Stiles. “There’s coffee?”

“No,” Stiles says. “I lied. Get up anyway.”

Erica kicks him in the shins, but sits up, trying to get somewhat vertical. Stiles waits until she’s in the bathroom to shove Isaac in the shoulder again.

“Congrats, buddy,” he says, breaking into a grin.

“Shut up.”

“Tell me you at least got lucky while I was sleeping? On the other hand, ew, no, don’t tell me anything. Tell me you remember about that red sock, I think I saw one under your bed.”

Isaac moans. “What did I ever do to you.”

“Stopped my brilliant seduction plan.” Stiles pokes him in the side. “Cockblocking deserves tasering, so if you don’t get up, you’ll miss your class and get roasted.”

Isaac rolls over and nearly falls out of the bed, stepping on Boyd at the last minute.

“If you missed a chance to get laid, no need to blame me.” Isaac says absently.

“Getting in the way of your friend talking to a hot guy is the definition of cockblocking. You owe me a new hot guy.”

“What hot guy? I only saw you talking to Derek.”

“ _That_ hot guy?” Stiles flops back on the bed. “The bartender guy? Like, my height? Dark hair? Needs a razor? No, scratch that,” he decides. “He can keep the stubble.”

“That,” Isaac says. “Is Derek.”

“You know a lot of Dereks,” Stiles says, getting up to down another glass of water, not missing the way Isaac looks at him.

“Not really, no. I only know one. And it was his bar. And for some reason he likes to bartend.”

Stiles chokes on his water. 

He goes back to “Laura’s” three days later, only waiting that long because he doesn’t want Derek to think Stiles came because of him. 

“I’m still not giving you alcohol,” Derek warns, making a sweeping gesture. “It was miserable enough the first time. You can have a Coke.”

Stiles groans. “This reminds me of so much embarrassment in high school,” he says. “All those times I tried to chat a guy up in a club only to have him realize my age and walk away.”

Derek stays silent. Stiles shuts up too, watching Derek be gruff to customers and snap at the girl who, Stiles assumes, is his only stuff.

“You’re short on people.”

“Haven’t noticed,” Derek snaps, reminding Stiles eerily enough of Lydia. That is not an association he wants to have.

“You have initiates, let them work! What’s the point of making a cult if you can’t make brainwashed people do your bidding and all that?”

Derek doesn’t roll his eyes as Lydia would have (Stiles is incredibly thankful for that), instead opting to frown some more. Stiles has known him for all of two hours, but it’s already plain the guy has three mood dials, and “Happy” is permanently broken.

“I made them quit,” he says. Stiles has no idea why Derek is telling him that, except maybe Derek thinks it’s his business, because he’s their friend, too. The thought warms Stiles from inside. 

“What,” he says belatedly.

“They need to focus on their studies,” Derek’s mouth is a stubborn line, as if this conversation has been repeated so many times he’s been reduced to repeat the same lines over and over. Which, knowing Erica, it probably has.

“To focus on your studies, you need money for your studies, dude,” Stiles points out. “To get money for your studies, you find a job. Do you see the logic I’m trying to subtly hint at?”

“Money’s not a problem. GPAs are.”

Stiles stares at Derek, mouth hanging open. 

“Oh. My God,” he says, wheezing. “Oh my God! You _are_ their cult leader! Their sugar daddy! Their…”

Derek growls at him, and Stiles snaps his mouth shut so fast he gives himself whiplash. He can’t seem to stop looking at Derek. The lighting in the bar gives his green eyes a reddish glint. From this up close he has a really nice mouth. Stiles finds himself fixating on it.

“I…” he tries.

“Sorry.” The word seems to fit uncomfortably in Derek’s mouth; he doesn’t look at Stiles when he says it. “Just… Don’t call me anyone’s sugar daddy ever again.”

“So noted,” Stiles says fast. His voice comes out unexpectedly rough. He coughs to clear his throat, and steps back from Derek. There is nothing for him to do in the bar. His phone chimes with an incoming message from his dad, reminding Stiles he had promised to visit in two weeks. Stiles dangles the phone in front of Derek’s.

“Parents,” he says with a sigh, expecting commiseration. This is an easy topic to find common ground for most people, even those who get along well with their parents, the way Stiles is with his dad, though mostly their good relationship hinges on Stiles not telling him very much about the things he had done as a teenager. Derek only spares him an unreadable look.

Stiles swings on a stool for a while before he finds it harder and harder to focus on something and decides the time has come.

“Say,” he tries, one foot on the floor already, hands shoved uncomfortably in the pockets of his jeans. He licks his lips and waits until Derek looks at him. “Would you maybe want to--I mean, do you think we could--Wait, stop, wait. I got this,” he adds, frowning. “Wanna go have a drink? Or dinner,” Stiles says hastily, glancing at someone’s dirty glass in Derek’s hands. “We can have dinner.”

Derek seems to consider his offer, and for five or so seconds Stiles feels confident in his charm. Then Derek says, “No.”

It would have stung if Stiles had hoped for something other than refusal. As it is, he just picks up his backpack from the floor.

“Sure. See you, then,” Stiles says and doesn’t wait for Derek’s nod. 

The next day Stiles is busy with assignments that are due in a week. Scott calls in the evening and they spend two hours shooting zombies over the net. Stiles promises to download footage of Allison shooting things at her competition. He also says he’ll try to get Lydia to do the same, but they both know it’s an empty promise. Lydia is still too pissed at Allison to even answer her texts. 

“They’re both just being unreasonable,” Stiles says, trying for comforting. Scott flips him a finger. “Don’t give me that, I know you’re dealing with a pissy Allison, but I’m dealing with a pissy Lydia. And I don’t have the option to mollify her with sex. They’ll sort themselves out, this too shall pass, just try to hold on.”

“I bet she’s not mad at Jackson for not coming.” Scott mutters.

Stiles shrugs. “She’s always mad at Jackson.” He tells Scott. “It’s a condition.”

Isaac’s still not back by the time Stiles goes to sleep. Neither Erica nor Boyd are visiting, so Stiles goes to sleep in a room that belongs completely to him for the first time in more than a month. His biggest regret is having no one to share his tiny uncomfortable bed with. 

Stiles wakes up in the middle of the night, fumbles to find his buzzing phone. Erica is sleeping with one of her legs and an arm on him. Stiles rolls his eyes. He is disoriented, can’t tell what day it is. According to his phone, he has two missed calls from Lydia. Stiles has no idea why it’s set on silent. 

He changes the settings and shoves Erica away a little, tries to decide if he’s woken up enough to take a leak or not. 

Once back he looks over the beds. Boyd has manhandled Isaac way too close to the edge of the bed in his sleep. Stiles makes a bet with himself Isaac will fall off by morning. He goes back to his bed, where Erica has already taken most of the space.

By the middle of October Stiles is starting to seriously regret his choices. 

“I’m starting to seriously regret my choices,” he says. Lydia continues to ignore him in favor of her vaguely Math-looking homework. It involves calculations, but looks more like something straight out of a Stargate show. The library is almost empty save for a few unfortunate students. The girl two tables to Stiles’ right is sleeping with her head on a pile of books all titled in Latin.

“I have too much homework to live. Matthews is on a mission to end my sex life. Of which there is none. And that’s after I brought him like three hundred mochachinos.” He scrunches his nose. “That sounded better in my head.”

“Stop whining and don’t talk to me about having sex with your professors,” Lydia says, not bothering to look up. She waves her mechanical pencil at Stiles and he tugs at it to make her stop working for a minute.

“Look,” he says. “That Halloween party Erica’s been talking about. I can’t go with you.”

“Hmm? That’s fine.” Lydia jabs at his hand with the pencil. “Didn’t expect you to.”

Stiles rises a brow. He’d gone to a dozen parties with Lydia as her default partner whenever she’d been broken up with Jackson.

“It’s time for you to get a boyfriend and stop misleading people into thinking I made a poor choice of voluntarily going out with you.” Lydia says not unkindly before returning her attention to the haphazard pile of notebooks and printouts on the table. 

“We’re bound for life,” Stiles says in as serious a tone as he can muster. “So you’re not going too?”

Lydia shifts in her seat and straightens her skirt. Stiles narrows his eyes.

“You are going, aren’t you.”

Lydia doesn’t answer or look at him. Stiles stars at her for a full minute before saying, “Did you invite Boyd?”

“Not like he was going to do anything,” Lydia snaps and visibly tries to will her face into not blushing. Stiles knows she hates being embarrassed, because it always looks like somebody splashed red blotches all over her face. She takes a breath. Stiles has his hands in the air.

“I’m not saying anything. Do you see me saying anything? Except for, chivalry is not dead.” Stiles snickers.

Lydia hits him with a thick notebook.

Stiles supposes he could talk to Boyd to warn him against hurting Lydia in any way, but decides against it. Lydia may be a mathematical prodigy, but her chemistry is only slightly worse. On the off-chance Boyd is a dickwad she’ll poison him herself. Besides, if Lydia ever hears about Stiles poking around her budding romance (or referring to it as such), she will shriek in his ear until it rots away, because Lydia unerringly reverts to being a five-year-old whenever she feels embarrassed. So Stiles does the next best things: he goes to Derek.

“So!” he says, leaning on the counter. “Has Boyd ever been in prison or listened to dubstep?”

Derek gives him a slightly puzzled death glare. “What are you doing here? It’s private property.”

“It’s a bar, dude.” Stiles doesn’t really think Boyd is some kind of delinquent, so he lets the fact that Derek didn’t answer slide. “And believe me, that wouldn’t work if I were sixteen.”

At four in the evening, “Laura’s” is practically deserted. Stiles has never been here at night, so his perception is probably skewed, but it does seem like the bar advertises to a particular type of people. Most of them prefer tight jeans and leather and aren’t particularly fond of being up at daylight hours.

Maybe everyone is secretly a vampire hunter. Or a stripper.

Derek is drying up a glass with a towel, so completely unimpressed by anything Stiles has to say that Stiles gives up on him. Derek also doesn’t tell him to leave or makes any remarks at all after that one. Stiles decides to take that as a good sign and looks around. The girl working instead of his lazy-ass roommates sneaks glances at him from time to time. Stiles waves at her, then decides to go talk to her. At least she looks like an actual human being. 

“Yell really loud if you need me,” he instructs Derek before sliding down from the high stool. 

He waits around while the girl tends to a couple of older customers in tattered biker jackets. She takes their beer jugs and goes to the kitchenette in the back to wash them. When she starts up the water, still silent, Stiles decides that he has to be the man here and start talking.

“Does Derek only hire people who can ignore people for a really, really long time?” he says conversationally. “Hi, I’m Stiles. What’s your name?”

“Apparently not,” she says. It takes Stiles a couple of seconds to figure out she’s answering his first question and not denying him his name. He looks at her expectantly until she steps back from the sink. “Name’s Rose.”

“I don’t work here,” Stiles says. Rose looks him up and down and gestures at the sink.

“You’ll still help. Since Boyd’s stopped helping out I’ve been swamped.”

Stiles steps to the sink, because being ordered about by beautiful girls is his life. He doesn’t really mind helping; being the only person working in a bar is probably stressful. It’s a miracle she hasn’t already left, so Stiles figures Derek pays her well. He rolls his the sleeves of his shirt up, starts the water. It bounces off the glass and a couple of drops hit him in the face. Rose is looking at him as if his right to live is being decided based on the resulting cleanness of the jugs.

“But seriously, I don’t. I’m his,” Stiles thinks about his admittedly nonexistent relationship with Derek. Telling random people employed under Derek about his suspicions concerning the cult his roommate may or may not be involved in is probably not the way to go either. He settles on, “I’m rooming with Isaac in college. You know, a tall kid, curly hair, killer smile?”

Rose nods and visibly thaws around the edges. 

“So you’re friends with Derek’s pack.”

“I’m not exactly running with them,” Stiles says, surprised at the word. “But we’re friends, alright.” Except with Derek, but Stiles decides to not mention that particular detail.

Her cool points go up when she admits to knowing where Beacon Hills is; not many people in Berkeley can say that. It’s easier to ask her if Boyd’s ever been in trouble. Rose laughs and shakes her head, though it turns out Boyd does listen to boy bands of questionable taste. Stiles stores that little fact for future reference. 

Rose turns out to be rather chatty, but she has work to do, and after a few minutes Stiles leaves her to it. His backpack is gone from the stool where he left it.

“Have you seen my… Thanks,” Stiles says when Derek fishes his backpack out from behind the bar.

“Should I pay you by the hour?”

“Nah, a little charity is good for my karma,” Stiles takes the backpack, fishes his cell phone out, cringing at his two missing calls he has. One of them is from the Sheriff's office phone and the other from Scott. Stiles sighs. He should probably call his dad back to make sure nothing’s happened. Deputy Michaelson would’ve abused his phone if something did, so it’s probably nothing. Except Stiles still has to tell his dad about not coming home for Halloween. Maybe he’ll luck out and dad will pull a Lydia on him too.

Except for inviting Boyd to a party as his date. Stiles isn’t ready for that.

He waves at Derek, who nods back, and forgets to call back on the way home.

The second call, made this time from the Stilinski home phone, finds Stiles in his room late at night, when he’s thumping his head against the table in frustration. Both Erica and Isaac have disappeared somewhere. New relationships require a lot of quality time together. Stiles is just happy that none of their quality time feature his room. Or his bed.

“Hi, Dad,” Stiles says. “I was just contemplating calling you to ask if you still got that shotgun, because I need someone to shoot me. Now.”

“I’m three hours away, Stiles.” John says. He sounds worried. “You’re not in trouble, are you?”

Stiles sighs. “I’m fine, just tired. Because of studying, not partying, before you ask. I’ve this paper to write, and I swear Cole’s assigned it just to torture me. Wait, did something happen? Why are you calling?”

John chuckles.

“I wanted to talk to you. And remind you that you’ve promised to come home for Halloween.”

Stiles winces.

“Yeah, Dad, sorry about that.”

“You can’t make it?”

“I can’t make it.”

“Are you sure you aren’t in trouble?” John says. Stiles is both grateful for his dad’s concern and a little offended that his first thought is ‘trouble’.

“That’s a nice voice of confidence, Dad!” Stiles says brightly. “Really, I’m doing okay. I’m just stressed out, and I want to get all my homework done before the weekend. I mean, I’ll come for Thanksgiving, it’s bound to be better than half a weekend?”

There’s silence on the other end of the line. Stiles waits for a full minute before John sighs. 

“Alright. Make sure not to drink too much.”

“Don’t worry, people are still refusing to give me alcohol even when I promise to pay actual money for it. I’m starting to think you had something to do with that.”

John laughs, and Stiles grins back.


End file.
